


a wild sea-light

by appleeater



Series: the golden age [1]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Schönberg/Boublil
Genre: Arthurian, F/F, F/M, Multi, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-27
Updated: 2018-08-27
Packaged: 2019-07-03 03:16:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15810201
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/appleeater/pseuds/appleeater
Summary: Being the only lady knight in the kingdom has very few perks. The title situation confuses people, no one will allow their sons to be her squire and Sir Marius, damn his eyes, now calls her his brother-in-arms, which hadn’t exactly been the intended effect of her running away from home to train by his side.





	a wild sea-light

Being the only lady knight in the kingdom has very few perks. The title situation confuses people, no one will allow their sons to be her squire and Sir Marius, damn his eyes, now calls her his brother-in-arms, which hadn’t exactly been the intended effect of her running away from home to train by his side. 

Of course, her main goal had been to keep the idiot alive, but if he had been moved by gratitude to propose marriage and agree to give up the whole knighting thing, she wouldn’t have complained. She might even had been happy, though that is sometimes difficult to imagine. Those idiot bards, when not calling her the lady knight, sometimes refer to her as the dark knight, and she knows they aren’t referring to the color of her hair. 

She doesn’t see what there is to be cheery about. The nobility seems to delight in sitting around writing reports for each other to read or in sitting around doing nothing at all. As for being a knight, she likes the questing, particularly if there is beast slaying involved, but she doesn’t much care for the damsels. They never send knights out to rescue regular women, just the hysterical noblewomen that cry a lot and are either offended by Eponine being the one sent to rescue them or feel entirely too entitled to a kiss. 

“Forget it,” Eponine tells the king. “I’m done with damsels.”

Enjolras sighs. It isn’t common knowledge outside the castle walls but the king isn’t much one for damsels, himself. The people want their golden king to be the founder of a line of great rulers. Enjolras, on the other hand, is mostly interested in building aqueducts and caring for the poor of the realm.

“Look,” he says, spreading his hands out in appeal. “The only knights available at the moment are you, Courfeyrac, and Marius. And I need Marius here for the records project.”

Courfeyrac was excellent at rescuing damsels. So excellent that they always fell in love with him. Courfeyrac liked to compose love poems to this or that lady but hadn’t ever shown any interest in serious courtship. This had sent more than one of them into the sort of decline that damsels were prone to, something that seemed to involve swooning and becoming pale. 

“Marius loves damsels,” Eponine says, trying to say it indifferently. 

“This particular damsel has been taken by Montparnasse.”

Eponine considers this. She knows Montparnasse is more or less her problem and if Marius goes after him he might manage to get himself killed. 

“What’d the girl do to piss off a dark witch?”

“Her father,” of course, “has been engaged in a territorial dispute with him.”

“And who is this father?” Eponine asks, expecting to hear one of the great noble families and is surprised to hear, instead, “Jean Valjean.” 

A merchant, though to be fair, a very rich and influential one. Valjean was mayor of the last town that her family had settled in before she’d run away with Marius. Eponine had never met the man on any of her brief visits back to the old stomping grounds but she knew him by reputation. 

“I didn’t know he had children.”

“A daughter,” Enjolras picks up a letter from his desk and reads with an impressive lack of sarcasm, “who is beautiful, smart, and kind. 

“Aren’t they always.”

Enjolras looks sympathetic but he still says, “You’re to leave within the hour.”

\---

About two miles away from the castle Eponine realizes that she is being followed. She hopes, uselessly, that Enjolras has just changed his mind and that she will be recalled to fight some more interesting monster than Montparnasse. 

But when she pulls up to the side of the road to wait for the other rider to overtake her, it’s not a courier, it’s Sir Marius Pontmercy. 

“What the hell are you doing?”

“I’m coming with you,” he says, a stubborn tilt to his noble jaw. Eponine, who is immune to the jaw by now, glares.

“Look, I’d love for you to take over but we both know the king said you couldn’t come.”

Marius lowers his jaw and fixes her with wide, pleading eyes. “I have to come.”

Eponine is not fully immune to the eyes. “Why?” she says. “What’s so special about this quest? Are the court records really that boring?”

“They’re fascinating,” Marius says, seriously. “But I love this woman, Eponine.” 

“Men usually don’t fall in love with damsels until after they meet them,” Eponine says, allowing her bitterness to turn her tone sour, as she nudges her horse into a walk.

Marius flushes. “Cosette is the girl that I met at the Midsummer ball.”

She’d heard the teasing but she hadn’t thought anything had come of it. She’d missed the ball, having been off hunting a manticore with Bahorel, and had considered herself lucky at the time. Maybe she still does. It’s not like she would have been able to stop Marius from falling in love. She would have just had to watch it. 

“We’ve been writing to each other,” Marius explains, dreamily. “I want to marry her.”

A merchant’s daughter could hardly do better. After achieving his knighthood, Marius had disavowed his family, but he was still a knight, and favored by the king besides. He wasn’t much of a monster slayer but he had other uses. 

“I can handle Montparnasse,” Eponine says. “I don’t need your help.”

“He stabs you,” Marius says darkly, which is fair.

Still, “Never seriously,” Eponine points out. 

Everytime Eponine runs into Montparnasse, he does manage to get at least one good jab in but never more than that. She’s better than him and always has been. The only reason he’s still alive is that he hasn’t ever given her a serious enough reason to kill him or Enjolras a serious enough reason to order her to. 

“We probably won’t fight. He doesn’t even like kidnapping. It’s too much work for the lazy idiot.”

“Cosette was raised in a convent,” Marius says. “I don’t like to think of her in that den of thieves.”

That den of thieves is where Eponine was born and raised. She does her best not to hate the woman.

“Marius, I promise that I’ll return your fair lady to you without a single scratch on her. You don’t want to deal with Montparnasse.” 

“I’m coming with you,” he says, and the jaw is up. 

She does some quick mental math. A stubborn Marius is not an unformidable thing and it’s just under two days of riding to get to Montreuil-sur-Mer. This delicate merchant’s daughter has already been in Montparnasse’s keeping for two days. They really can’t afford the delay.

“All right,” she relents. “But if you slow me down, I’ll leave you behind. And you get to explain yourself to Enjolras.” 

Marius smiles.

He may not be the kingdom’s most formidable fighter but he’s a fast rider and he doesn’t complain about the hard pace that Eponine sets. He doesn’t quest much, tied up in projects for the king, so it’s been a while since they had a chance to ride together like this, just the two of them in the open air. It’s easy to forget, for a while, where they’re going and why. 

Near sundown they decide to stop at an inn. They request separate rooms but it doesn’t stop the looks, the wink-wink-nudge attitude of the innkeeper as he gives them rooms right next to each other. 

The other thing about being a lady knight is that everyone assumes she is sleeping with at least one of the others. In fact she has slept with Sir Bahorel a couple of times but he’s surprisingly discreet about it. There’s songs suggesting this knight or that as her secret lover but they’ve mostly stopped since the one about her and Enjolras. He had said a choice word or two to the bard and that had been the end of that. 

She does know that there is still one song floating around that suggests there are orgies taking place at the castle, but she doesn’t mind since it slanders all the knights equally. 

Of course Marius catches the landlord’s tone and goes all outraged and red. Eponine has to drag him away to keep him from fighting for her honor. 

“I’m used to it,” she tells Marius, rolling her eyes. “I’m not one of your damsels.”

Through his anger, Marius smiles. “I know that, Eponine. But it isn’t fair for them to assume.”

“Anyone ever tell you life isn’t fair?” Eponine says, opening the door to her room. 

“You. All the time.”

Eponine has a tray sent up to the her room because she refuses to go into the communal dining hall for supper. They’re not so close to Montreuil-sur-Mer that she’s guaranteed to run into someone she knows but she’s familiar with the atmosphere of such inns. Her father had owned one for a while until he’d got run out of town for dark magic or thieving. She doesn’t remember which, but it was always one of the two when they had to pack up and leave in the middle of the night. It was a familiar pattern. She’d traveled more of the kingdom before she turned ten than most people did their entire lives. 

“Are you sure you don’t want to come with me to the dining hall?” Marius asks, looking nervous. 

“Very sure,” Eponine says. “Have fun making friends.”

He scowls at her and marches away defiantly. She is only half making fun, is the thing. Marius can make friends anywhere. Peasants like him because he’s what they want a lord to be: a good listener with a generous nature. Lords like him because he’s unthreatening and well-mannered. 

Eponine orders herself a bath, a unnecessary indulgence, considering she’ll be riding the next day, but the landlord had assured her that they had a nice fire charm that could give her a hot bath with no trouble. 

She relaxes into the water with a sigh. It’s not the most exciting quest but she doesn’t mind dealing with Montparnasse, really, and the girl is almost certainly in perfect condition, though she’ll probably be weepy and frightened. They’ll hand over the ransom, Marius will comfort his lady, and Eponine will go drown herself in ale before they ride back to the castle. 

A slight sound outside the room interrupts her musings. 

The handle of the door moves and Eponine’s eyes snap open. She’s halfway out of the tub and reaching for her sword when the door opens and Marius bursts into the room. 

He makes a yelping noise and quickly turns around. “I am so, so sorry,” he says. 

“Haven’t you heard of knocking?” Eponine feels nakeder than naked. “What on earth is so urgent?” she demands of Marius’ back. Even the backs of his ears are flaming red. 

“Um, it’s just that some of the men downstairs were talking,” Marius says. 

“Men do little else.” Eponine rises out of the tub and roughly towels herself off.

Marius laughs, a high nervous sound. You’d think he’d never seen a naked women before. Then again, perhaps he hasn’t. 

“They were saying,” Marius continues, manfully, “that Montparnasse has moved his base of operations.”

“What? Why?” Eponine shoves on her breeches. 

“Valjean, I think. They were talking about a merchant.”

“You’re not telling me that the old man managed to drive Monty out?” Eponine says disbelievingly, through her shirt. “You can turn around now, you great idiot.”

Marius does not turn around, not all the way. He angles himself carefully as though prepared to whip around again at a moment’s notice. He’s crimson. It’s a stupidly attractive look on him, which is why she suspects Courfeyrac likes to tease him with ribald songs. 

“Did they say where, exactly, he was?”

“No,” Marius says and he offers her a sheepish grin. “I thought you could ask them. They don’t seem to like nobles much.” 

Eponine rolls her eyes. So much for a nice quiet bath. 

\---

She recognizes Babet the second she comes into the dining hall. It takes him a second longer to place her. He hasn’t seen her since she was a teenager after all. 

On the bright side, he’ll be a reliable source of information about Montparnasse if they can get him to talk. Unfortunately, he won’t be inclined to talk to her. The last time she’d seen him, she’d ruined a score of his gang’s. It had been the last time she’d seen her father, too, come to think of it. 

“Well if it isn’t Thernadier’s brat,” Babet says, nasally. His eyes narrow on her. “What are you doing traveling with a king’s man.”

“You are addressing Sir Eponine of the king’s knights,” Marius tells him, stiffly. 

Babet raises his eyebrows. “A knight? I didn’t realize they let common little thieves in. Perhaps I should try out. I think I’d look good in a suit of armor.”

The men around him laugh but Babet doesn’t so much as crack a smile. His eyes are cold. He’d kill her if he got the chance but she’s made too much of herself to be afraid of pond scum like Babet.

“You’re welcome at the castle anytime,” Eponine says, seating herself across from him, forcing two of his companions to pull away to make room for her. “We’ll bring out all the knights to greet you.”

Marius hasn’t recognized Babet but he’d know his name. The bounty on his head is not inconsiderable. 

Babet’s eyes narrow. “You’re looking for Montparnasse.”

Eponine nods. “And if I don’t find him I'll be forced to turn my eye to other business. Wouldn’t do to go back empty-handed.”

“All this fuss,” Babet says, shaking his head, “over a merchant’s daughter.”

Eponine shrugs. It’s equally incomprehensible to her.

“He’s up the coast, a few miles from Montreuil-sur-Mer,” Babet says. “Though I would have thought you’d keep better track of your lover, Ms. Thenardier.”

“Sir,” she reminds him, rolling her eyes. 

The tactic is an obvious one. Even Enjolras knows about her affair, such as it is, with Montparnasse. Everyone knows and they also know that if they try to discredit her, she’ll knock them down faster than they can call her a whore. If he hopes to embarrass her, he’ll have to try harder. “How many men?”

Babet’s eyes search for a weakness but he won’t find any. 

“Six,” he says, finally. 

“Thank you for your time,” Eponine says.

\---

They leave the comfort of the inn to camp as far away as they can get with the little remaining daylight. Eponine might not be afraid of Babet but she’s also not stupid. It won’t be much of a relaxing night if she has to wake up and fight off an assassination attempt. 

Marius makes no protest about the move but he glowers the whole time and doesn’t speak at all as they set up their bed rolls. He pointedly puts his a full three feet away from hers. 

“What is it?” she finally asks, annoyed. She can’t sleep with him sulking beside her. It’s a loud kind of silence.

“Are you and Montparnasse truly lovers?” Marius asks, voice small. She can’t see his face well in the dark but she knows that the glower is still there. 

Marius is aware she’s no virgin but perhaps a criminal is a step too far for him. 

“We were,” she says, even though the past tense is not a totally certain thing. She certainly won’t be taking Montparnasse to bed with Marius about, though.

Marius’ silence grows oppressive. 

“What?” she snaps at him. 

“I just thought you were interested in ladies.” 

Marius had once gotten pretty ironclad proof of that interest when he’d walked into her rooms after a festival and he’d caught her with her hands up a very pretty girl’s skirt. Eponine didn’t care for damsels but she sure liked women. 

“I am,” she says, “though keep it down will you. I don’t need every priest within a mile to come lecture me about pleasures of the flesh.” She’s more worried about wolves, to be honest, but she doesn’t want to remind Marius of that possibility. 

“But-” 

“I like both,” she says, taking pity on his dumb, beautiful face. 

“Oh! Like Courfeyrac,” Marius says, and he sounds cheerful; the mystery solved. 

“No one is like Courfeyrac,” Eponine says, nettled at the comparison. You wouldn’t catch her composing love poetry to every fine pair of eyes she saw. “But yes.”

“Thank you for telling me,” Marius says, as though it had been a secret. As though everyone in the world didn’t know that she was attracted to men and one man in particular. Everyone in the world but Marius, apparently. He really didn’t know. Stupid Montparnasse, managing to cause her trouble without even trying.

“Go to sleep,” she tells Marius. “I want to reach the new base before nightfall tomorrow.” 

\---

The ride up the coast is a pleasant one, though Marius’ increasing intensity as they approach the town hovers like a stormcloud beside her. She has no plans to fight Montparnasse if she can help it but Marius clearly has other ideas. She won’t allow him anywhere near such a fight but she lets him get all stormy and heroic, not wanting to have the argument. 

It’s near dark when they reach town and it’s easy enough to find Montparnasse. It’s a small town and Montparnasse lives as one who is used to a large one. The well-dressed and well-armed guards standing outside the largest building in town and the music coming from inside of it make it clear where he’s put up shop.

“We should wait until morning,” Eponine says. “They’ll be hungover.”

Marius sets his jaw at her. “I’m not waiting.”

That’s what she’d thought he’d say. 

She surveys the scene before her. 

Sometimes she misses being a thief. She would have been able to climb easily to the second story of the building, to crawl in the window and find the girl, blending in with the drunken crowd. But she is here on the king’s business and she has to try the official way first. 

“Let me do the talking, alright?”

Marius agrees but his expression makes it clear that he doesn’t want there to be any talking at all. All this would be so much easier, Eponine thinks, if she didn’t have to worry about protecting Marius along with everything else.

“Follow me and don’t say anything.”

She rises and throws her shoulders back, striding towards the guards.

“Good evening gentlemen,” she tells them, letting her words blur into her childhood accent. “I’m here to see Montparnasse.”

She doesn’t recognize either of them but she’s gratified to see the uneasy looks that mean that they recognize her.

“Who says he’s here?” the bolder of the two asks, though his bravado is obviously a cover for fear.

“I say,” she says, with a smile. That smile is the only useful gift she’d inherited from her father. A bard had called it a wolf’s grin. 

“Are those your dulcet tones I hear, dear heart?” comes a silky voice from the doorway.

Montparnasse slinks around the door, lazily waving away the concern of guards. He favors Eponine with a smile of his own, sly and knowing. 

“Good god, Mont,” she tells him, “what dragon shat you out?”

Montparnasse is dressed to the nines, as per usual, but the rich red of his cloak and the gold glitter of his rings can’t quite make up for the dark circles beneath his eyes and the unhealthy color of his usually luminous skin. 

He pulls himself up to his entirely unimpressive height and says with dignity, “I assume that you are here for the girl.”

“We are,” Eponine says. “Are you going to give her to us?”

She places her hand casually on her sword. It’s not that she minds fighting Montparnasse. He’s good and he’s never stabbed her anywhere she couldn’t recover from. She’s sure that Marius will make a fuss, though, and she’d really rather not drag the thing out if she doesn’t have to. 

“No need to fight,” Montparnasse says, with a lazy wave of his hand, “provided that you’ve brought the ransom.”

The nonchalance would be more convincing if he didn’t look as though he was going to fall over. Is that a gouge on his neck? No one besides Eponine has gotten close enough to wound him since before she can remember. He was inclined to retreat before he could get wounded. 

“We brought the ransom,” she says, slowly, and goes to her saddle bags to retrieve it. 

Enjolras had looked thoughtful when she’d asked if they were going to pay. He knows that his advisors use Montparnasse, sometimes, for jobs that they think he shouldn’t know about. They thinks his golden honor should remain untainted. Eponine thinks they underestimate their king. He had counted out the ransom and, with a small smile, given her several reams of very fine fabric. 

“A peace offering,” Enjolras had said. “We might need him to protect the coast come winter.” 

Montparnasse, true to form, casts a single look at the coin and then goes straight for the fabric, hand gently testing the quality. Without looking away from a particularly nice blue velvet, Montparnasse snaps his fingers. “Fetch the girl,” he tells his goons.

It’s only a moment before they return, a young woman between them. Montparnasse nods at them and they fall back. 

In contrast to Montparnasse, the woman looks to be in radiant, blooming health. She certainly doesn’t look like she’s spent the better part of a week in captivity. Her hair is shining and her eyes are bright. 

“Cosette,” Marius cries, running forward. 

The girl immediately flings her arms around Marius’ neck and he gives a joyful laugh and spins her around. When he sets her down, they’re both laughing. 

To Eponine’s surprise, the girl then turns to Eponine and approaches her with open arms. 

All of the sudden it comes back to Eponine. 

“Cosette,” she says, and takes a step back because she can’t help it. She remembers now why that name sounded so familiar. 

Cosette pauses, arms still outstretched, and then there’s a look of dawning recognition. 

“Eponine,” she says, a gasp as much as a word, and then runs over and throws her arms around Eponine’s neck.

Eponine doesn’t spin her around like Marius. She doesn’t even bring her arms up to return the embrace. 

“You know each other?” Marius asks, clearly delighted.

Cosette, arms falling to Eponine’s shoulders, turns her head to Marius. “We were children together.”

Marius’ expression dims at that. He knows full well what Eponine’s childhood had been like. “I thought you were raised in a convent?”

Eponine takes a step back and Cosette turns back to her, eyes bright. For a moment Eponine thinks that she’s going to reach out and embrace her again but she just smiles, brightly, and it’s just as overwhelming as an embrace would have been. 

“This was before that,” Cosette says to Marius, still looking at Eponine. “Look what’s become of you, Eponine. You’re a knight!” 

“Of course you know each other,” Montparnasse says, looking harried. He’s watching Cosette carefully, and Eponine realizes, startled, that he’s treating her like a threat. 

She raises her eyebrows and catches Montparnasse’s gaze. He smiles but it’s a weak effort. “You have the girl and I have my ransom,” he says, spreading out his hands. “You can leave anytime, unless of course you’d like to stay for a glass of wine? The other knight can ride ahead with the lady while we discuss business.”

Eponine puts her hand back on the hilt of her sword and fixes Montparnasse with a look. 

“You want to talk business? Fine. You will stop feuding with Valjean. You will let him have control of the city and content yourself with other spoils.”

Marius smiles tightly. He looks like he’d like to stab her, an expression she’s very familiar with. “Any other impossibly demeaning requests to make of me, dear heart?”

“Sir,” Marius snaps, an arm coming around Cosette’s waist. He looks very heroic. 

Montparnasse looks at Marius and seems amused for the first time. “Sir dear heart, then,” he says to Eponine with a wicked smile. “I am not a subject of the king’s, you know. A favor here or there is not the same thing as bowing to another man.”

Montparnasse has never met Enjolras or Eponine thinks that he might have a different opinion. Enjolras has style and she has to admit that he inspires obeisance.

“If it’s not him, it'll just be some another king” Eponine tells him. They both know it. There is always someone more powerful than you, richer than you, better connected than you. You just have to hope that person doesn’t take it into their head to destroy you. Montparnasse has been skating the line, which is foolish. It’s hard to imagine a king that will be better for him than Enjolras. 

Montparnasse has a look on his face that she can’t quite interpret. Then he lunges forward and presses a hard kiss against her cheek, moving away before she can do more than get her hand on a dagger. 

“Get out of here would you? You can tell the old man he’ll be hearing from me.”

Montparnasse melts back into the shadows - literally. It’s a showy trick that he’d mastered when they were only children.

Eponine turns to Cosette and Marius. 

Marius looks outraged, though she can’t tell if it’s from the kiss or from the lost opportunity to fight. Cosette looks curious. 

“Come on,” Eponine says. “I refuse to sleep here.”

\---

They don’t go far. Marius suggests riding until they find an inn but Cosette surprises Eponine by saying she doesn’t mind sleeping outdoors. Maybe it’s an adventure for her, Eponine thinks, bitterly. She probably hasn’t slept a single night on the ground. Well, Eponine thinks guiltily, at least since she had been rescued from the Thenardiers. 

They find a nice clearing in a forest near the King’s Road. Marius offers Cosette his bedroll, blushing, but Eponine had brought an extra. Cosette accepts it with a smile. She’s nothing but smiles, this girl; nothing like Eponine remembers her. 

Cosette helps Marius gather firewood, though she clearly has no idea how to build a fire. Marius gently arranges the wood for her, explaining the structure. Cosette, damn her, looks genuinely interested. 

Then Eponine reaches into her bag to pull out a flint. 

When she looks up it’s to see that Cosette is already warming her hands over a blazing flame. She’s put off the scent by Cosette’s unconcerned expression but Marius’ guilty one makes the picture clear enough.

Eponine raises her eyebrows. Well, that certainly explains a lot. 

She sets her bag down and goes over to the fire, planting herself beside it. 

“Thank you,” she says to Cosette, as casually as she can, mostly just to see Marius gape like a fish.

Cosette beams. Either she was so sure that Eponine wouldn’t mind witches, having been sired by two, or sure that she could defend herself against any attack. Having known her parents, Eponine thought it unlikely that it was the first explanation. Monty’s wariness lend credence to the second. 

“If you’re a witch, couldn’t you have escaped on your own?” Eponine says bluntly. She remembers the scratch on Montparnasse’s neck and has to suppress a smirk.

Marius makes an indignant noise but Cosette seems unoffended by the question. 

“Maybe,” she admits. “But Montparnasse is very powerful and I wasn’t sure where I was. Perhaps if no one had come I would have tried.”

“Of course I was coming,” Marius cries, taking her hand in his. “I will always come for you.”

For a terrible moment, Eponine thinks they’re going to start kissing right there in front of her. She contemplates clearing her throat or maybe emptying her canteen over their heads. But it’s unnecessary. They remember where they are and move apart, blushing. 

“It’s why Papa took me from your parents,” Cosette says, turning back to Eponine, flustered. “He knew my mother and thought it likely I would have the gift and would need training.” 

Eponine understands the implication well enough. Valjean, a witch. She had known that her father had feared him but she hadn’t realized that it might have been a matter of magic instead of influence. Still that left a question unanswered. “Why on earth did he decide to settle in a city with the kingdom’s most notorious witch hunter?”

Cosette shrugs off the mention of Javert with startling nonchalance. Marius looks uneasy. Sir Javert occasionally comes to court and Marius is not the only person who he makes nervous. 

“I’m not sure why,” she says. “But once he was elected mayor, it wasn’t like he could leave.”

And Javert, who had once killed any witch he encountered, now had to share his city with two wealthy, powerful ones, Eponine thought, not without amusement

“Anyways,” Cosette says, smiling, “he and Javert are friends now. They eat dinner together at least once a week.”

The most unbelievable part of that is that Javert would have a friend. 

Cosette laughs at whatever face Eponine must make at that thought. Marius looks caught by the laughter. His hand rests a breath from her leg, his whole body leans towards her. 

“We’ll leave at dawn,” Eponine says, more harshly than she means to. 

\---

Cosette’s father is a handsome man, who is much stronger looking than she would have expected from a merchant. He has a warm smile and his hand is rough with callouses when he shakes hers. He doesn’t look a thing like any of the witches she knows. 

“Sir Eponine,” he says, “thank you for bringing my daughter back to me.”

“It was no trouble,” Eponine says, uncomfortable. Everyone around here knows about her past and her relationship with Montparnasse. He must, too, and is just being polite. 

Valjean turns curiously to Marius. 

“Ah,” Eponine says, “and may I introduce Sir Marius? He also helped to recover your daughter.”

It’s clear that Valjean recognizes the name and just as clear that he doesn’t approve. Eponine has to stop herself from laughing out loud at the way his lips thin and he regards Marius sternly.

“You are welcome as well,” he says, but he doesn’t seem to mean it. 

Cosette rolls her eyes at her father. “Papa,” she says, warningly. 

“I have a letter from the king,” Eponine says, to dispel the moment. She enjoys watching Marius squirm as much as the next person but she doesn’t want to see a quarrel break out. 

Valjean accepts it and tells Cosette to inform the housekeeper to prepare two rooms for their guests. 

“You both are staying, I assume?” he says, with a thin-lipped look at Marius. “At the very least you must rest a day before returning, but you are welcome for as long as you care to remain.”

Eponine accepts the invitation because she is under orders to do so, not because of the pleading eyes Marius turns her way. Enjolras wants to be sure that the area is secure, and it never hurts for her to have the opportunity to renew her contacts in the area. She’s not sure if Enjolras knows that one of those contacts is her fifteen-year-old brother. 

Cosette claps her hands together with happiness and rushes away to do as she’s been told.

“This is going to be so much fun. It’s been ages since we’ve had visitors.”

\---

Eponine had assumed that the first chance they got Cosette and Marius would sequester themselves away to murmur nonsense at one another and exchange locks of hair; whatever lovers did.

But everywhere Eponine turns, Cosette is there, Marius trailing behind her with an adoring look. She had been stupid to assume he would assert himself, though he doesn’t seem displeased. In spite of Eponine’s presence, he hasn’t stopped smiling all day.

Cosette murmurs something to Marius and he laughs, leaning his head towards her. For all no one’s mentioned a formal betrothal, Marius and Cosette walk around arm in arm as though they’re already married.

On the second day of their visit, they are parted by Marius’ discovery of a project. Besides his daily, groveling, correspondence with Enjolras, Marius has discovered something else to absorb his interest: an plan of Valjean’s to start a school for the city’s peasants. 

With typical enthusiasm Marius launches himself at the project, earning the approval of both the locals and Valjean, tentative though it may be.

While Marius is occupied, Eponine goes and visits her brother, who seems his usual indifferent self, though he accepts her gifts with reasonable gratitude. She visits a few of the local influencers, carrying messages from the palace, carefully and quickly crafted by Combeferre, no doubt. 

However, she has a lot of time on her hands to spend haunting Valjean’s grounds and wherever she goes it seems Cosette is there to wander with her, tucking her arm in Eponine’s in much the same way as she does with Marius.

“Can you not stand on your own?” Eponine asks her in exasperation. 

Cosette laughs and lets go, pretending to stumble about like a drunkard. “I suppose not,” she says, righting herself and taking Eponine’s arm again.

Eponine trains, of course, and Cosette follows her there, too. 

She shouldn’t be surprised that Cosette knows how to fight seeing as she could give Montparnasse so much trouble. Valjean apparently had insisted that she learn how to fight with a sword. She’s unnaturally quick and can turn invisible for seconds at a time, making sparring with her interesting, even though Eponine wins every time. 

“Aren’t you getting tired of knocking me to the ground?” Cosette says, looking up at Eponine, braid coming undone. She looks very pretty like this, cheeks flushed, pouting. “I’m good but I think we both know I’m no real match for you.”

“Well, I’m one of the best,” Eponine says, with justifiable pride. “And it’s good for you to practice.”

“What if we did something else?” Cosette suggests, blowing her hair out of her face.

“Like what?” Eponine asks warily. 

“I can set things on fire?” Cosette suggests. “Or enchant arrows to fly at you?”

Eponine fixes her with a look. Cosette shrugs, eyes dancing with mischief. “It’s just a suggestion.”

“How about both?” Eponine counters, leaning on her sword.

Marius violently scolds them both when he finds her dodging a rain of a flaming arrows. 

“Not a single one hit me,” Eponine tells him, smugly.

“I wouldn’t have let anything happen to her,” Cosette says, and Eponine doesn’t let her help with training anymore, because clearly she’s holding back.

\---

Marius appears at the door of her bedchamber one night before dinner. She hadn’t seen him all day but the project is clearly going well. He looks happy and tired. 

“What do you want?” she says. She’s just returned from an errand and is going over the to-do list Combeferre had provided her for the visit. It’s almost complete. 

“Oh, nothing,” Marius says. “I just wanted to see how you’re doing.”

“You see me everyday,” Eponine points out. “I’m fine.”

Marius nods and continues to look uncertain. She wishes he would come in, instead of hovering nervously at the doorway. “You and Cosette are spending a lot of time together.”

Eponine carefully puts the letter down. “You’ve been busy,” she says. “And I guess she’s bored.”

“She’s not bored,” Marius says. “And she’s been helping me, when she can. I think she just likes you.”

Eponine stands. She’s not sure what to do with that information. Is she supposed to say, “I like her, too”? She thinks that’s plenty obvious. She shrugs at Marius. 

“It’s just you don’t have any friends that are women,” Marius says, carefully.

“Because I have so many women at court to choose from,” Eponine scoffs, walking over to her bed and removing her boots. She can’t wear them to dinner, caked in mud as they are. Are she and Cosette friends?

Marius continues to search her face. She’s not sure what he’s looking for but she doesn’t like it. “Oh, get out of here before I throw something at you,” she snaps, hefting a boot in one hand to show him she means it.

He grins, looking so much like the boy she’d decided to follow all those years ago. “I’m just glad you two get along,” he says, his laughter following him out the door as he dodges the boot. 

Eponine isn’t so sure that he’d be glad if he knew some of the thoughts Eponine had been having lately. 

\---

Something she tells neither Marius nor Cosette is that Eponine had seen Cosette once since they were children. 

She had been visiting, still a squire and still disguised as a boy, coming to check on Gavroche and Azelma. She had turned a street at night and happened to look up into a window and see a beautiful girl in nothing but a slip, brushing her hair.

Eponine hadn’t sorted out the woman thing yet, so at the time she had thought she was envious of the girl’s long hair, her slender arms. She knows better now. She knows what had stopped her in that street and had held her there, mesmerized. 

And then out of the shadows had come four dark figures. They hadn’t noticed her, looking up at the window of the house. 

It had been Babet, Montparnasse, Claquesous, and her father. 

“Stop,” she had hissed at them. 

“Who’s there?” her father had said, hands already alight with blue flame. 

“Don’t you recognize your own daughter?” Montparnasse had hissed. 

“Ha,” her father had said, eyes narrowing. “I don’t see much of a resemblance myself. Go on your way Sir, or you’ll regret it.”

Heart pounding in her chest, Eponine had drawn her sword. 

“You’ll regret that, my girl,” he said, hands flashing.

She had never fought her father, never would have thought it possible to take him on, let alone three other dark witches, but she had run them all off with only a sword and a dagger to defend her. 

She’d never seen her father again but she hadn’t needed to. He was nothing to fear any longer. 

It was the first time that she knew that she would be more than her father was and that’s what the night became about for her. She would be a real knight, not just a pretender. 

She had all but forgotten about the girl in the window.

Cosette. 

\---

Valjean insists they eat dinner together every night and Eponine is surprised to see he keeps a simple table, though a generous one. She’s even more surprised to see that he gives his leftovers to the poor.

“He’s a saint,” Marius had whispered to her fearfully the first night. 

Eponine had laughed at him but he might just be.

He certainly has been unusually welcoming to her. Not only do noblemen tend to find her unsettling, Valjean also has a personal reason for disliking her. She can’t fully recall the details of Cosette’s stay with the Thenardiers but she can’t imagine that it had been a situation that a doting father would approve of. 

But Valjean is nothing but kind to her and never once mentions her father, though a casual question about her magical ability (non-existent, she tells him truthfully) makes it clear he knows who she is.

“And what have you done with your day, Sir Eponine?” Valjean asks her after Marius has finished enthusiastically regaling them with his fundraising plans for the school. 

“King’s business,” Eponine says, with a shrug. That day king’s business had consisted only of threatening a minor merchant in the area who was engaged in smuggling and therefore not paying proper taxes. “And training, mostly.”

“She’s very good,” Cosette says, though with a slight pout. She’s clearly put out that Eponine hasn’t allowed her to help again. 

“Of course,” Valjean says. “It must be hard work to keep up such skills. Do you know, you were the talk of the kingdom even before your gender was revealed? They said you were the best knight in a century.”

“Until Bahorel came along,” Eponine says, modestly. 

It hadn’t been a huge secret, her being a woman. Everyone at the castle had known, her beardless chin and lack of height making it pretty obvious. After Enjolras had risen to the throne, she hadn’t even bothered binding anymore. Still, there was a difference between everyone around her knowing and there being songs sung all across the kingdom about the lady knight. 

“Why did you become a knight?” Cosette asks, placing her elbows on the table and leaning forward. “I think it’s marvelous that you did but it must have been very difficult.” 

Eponine hates telling the story because everyone can tell she’s in love with Marius when she tells it. But she doesn’t have to tell it, this time.

“Eponine is my hero,” Marius says, with devastating sincerity.

“Jesus Pontmercy,” Eponine says, hastily taking a sip of wine in hopes it will cover her red cheeks. Judging by Valjean’s gentle twinkle, the maneuver doesn’t succeed. 

Marius turns to Cosette to explain. “Eponine saved my life by joining me in knight’s training. I was completely unprepared when my grandfather sent me away and she knew it.”

Eponine had been completely uninterested in being a knight at the time. What she had been was desperately in love with a naive idealist, who had taught her to read even though she was the daughter of a notorious witch and who had beautiful hands that were excellent at turning pages in a book but not at wielding any sort of weapon. 

When Marius’ grandfather insisted on him being sent away, she had been almost as terrified as he had been. She knew that Marius was good at many things but not fighting or politics. “Bring me with you,” she had demanded. “I want to be a knight.”

“You hate knights.”

“I hate them because they’re bad at being knights. I won’t be,” she had said, full of bravado. 

And Marius had done her the greatest kindness of her life by letting her follow him even though he knew that she had been lying through her teeth. 

“And she kept me safe,” Marius says, warmly. “And taught me how to fight, too. I never could have done it without her.” 

Eponine escapes the table as soon as she politely can, seeking the fresh air of the balcony. Sometimes, Marius makes her feel like she’s a scared, stupid girl again. She clenches the stone of the balustrade hard enough to make her knuckles go white. 

She’s not alone for long. 

The soft swish of Cosette’s skirts alerts Eponine to her presence. Eponine doesn’t acknowledge her and they stand in silence for a long moment. 

When Cosette speaks, it’s with a question that surprises Eponine into looking at her. “I remember another girl. You had a sister, didn’t you?”

“Still do,” as far as Eponine’s aware, anyways. She’s not sure what has become of Azelma. “So I’m not looking for a replacement.”

She’s been called brother one too many times by Marius to relish the same from someone else that she - well, she shouldn’t be thinking about the two of them, in comparison, in conjunction. Christ, what a mess. 

But Cosette looks surprised, as though that’s not what she had meant at all. “I wouldn’t know how to be a sister. I was raised alone.”

“With nuns,” Eponine says dryly, because she still can’t quite believe it.

Cosette grins and there is a wickedness to it. “They wanted me to take orders, I’ll have you know.”

“Sure had them fooled.”

Cosette laughs. “I am a perfect model of propriety.”

Eponine arches an eyebrow at her. 

“I am,” Cosette protests, still laughing. “I haven’t had any opportunities to be otherwise.”

If it was any other girl, Eponine would have taken that invitation. Instead she just rolls her eyes, leaning back on the balustrade with her elbows. Unsettlingly, Cosette comes and leans beside her. They aren’t touching but they’re close enough that it’s almost worse than touching. Eponine is suddenly very aware of her own body and of the body next to hers. 

“That was a lovely story Marius told at dinner,” Cosette says, quietly. 

Eponine says nothing. 

She knows. Of course, she knows. She has sharp eyes and Eponine isn’t as subtle as she should be, too used to Marius’ cheerful obliviousness. 

“You’ve known him a long time,” Cosette says, and there’s a lot in that sentence that isn’t being said out loud. 

“Not as long as I’ve known you.”

“I-” Cosette begins, but Eponine doesn’t want to hear whatever she’s going to say. She rises.

“I have business in town,” she says. 

\---

She really does have business in town. 

The streets of Montreuil-sur-Mer have changed since she’d last been here but not so much that her feet don’t lead her surely to the door of the second best pub in town. 

From a table in the corner, a man with gray hair and a hard face looks up at her and nods. 

She sits across from him. Javert wordlessly slides her a pint. 

She sits and they drink in total silence. When they both reach the bottom of their tankards, Javert wordlessly orders them both another. It’s not until they’re halfway through those that he says, “I may murder your brother.”

“Good for you if you can manage it.”

He grunts in acknowledgement. 

No one had been more surprised than her when Gavroche had written that he’d become a page for Sir Javert, an unheard of position for a commoner, let alone for the son of a dark witch. She had written immediately to Javert, demanding that he send any bills her way, even though she had only been a squire herself at the time and could ill afford it. 

He had never once sent a bill. But he had begun sending terse little notes. 

_Gavroche has grown four inches this year. He resembles a maypole._

_Kindly remind your brother that knights do not steal._

_Gavroche did well in the last mock tournament._

She’d never really known what to think of Javert who had never displayed a sense of humor and was famed for his remorseless hunting of witches. He had killed her father, in fact, before she’d gotten around to it. Still, there were those notes. 

“I hear Valjean’s girl is safe and sound,” Javert says. 

“I handled it.”

Javert nods but he doesn’t look happy. Eponine is sure that if he had his way, he would kill Montparnasse. Eponine doesn’t think he hates witches but he does hate disorder, and Montparnasse is certainly an agent of chaos.

“My father had the care and keeping of her when we were young,” Eponine says. 

Javert lips curls. “She’s fortunate that she ended up in the hands of Valjean, then.”

“Even though he’s a witch.”

His face hardens. “A better sort of witch than Thenardier.” He never apologizes for his contempt towards her father. It’s one of the reasons that Eponine makes a point of seeing him when she’s in town. It’s refreshing.

“Low bar,” she points out.

Javert nods in acknowledgement of the point. “Valjean is a good mayor.”

Eponine has rarely heard him praise another so bluntly. Maybe they really are friends. 

“How long are you staying?”

Eponine drains the remainder of her pint and says flatly, “Not too much longer now.”

\---

That night Eponine has a dream where she had turned the corner of street to see Cosette in a window, wearing only a shift and, unlike years ago, Cosette smiled and beckoned her up. Eponine had gone, helpless, and had lifted Cosette’s hair and kissed her soft neck, her hands sliding Cosette’s shift up and up and - then Eponine had woken. She needs to leave. 

“We can’t stay forever,” she tells Marius in the morning.

“I know,” Marius says, seriously. 

“Tomorrow?” she says, with more care than she usually would. 

He frowns but doesn’t disagree. Something in Eponine relaxes with relief. Something else twists in disappointment. 

Valjean seems genuinely disappointed when they announce their plans to him. “You mustn't feel the need to leave. You are welcome here as long as you care to stay. You both have been very useful. And my daughter has certainly welcomed the company.”

Marius says all the necessary pretty things, which is good, because Eponine can’t very well say, “I’d love to stay forever but this, whatever it is, would only end in me getting my heart broken and also, we have jobs to do.” 

Eponine tells herself that she’s doing Marius a favor by letting him tell Cosette the news himself. They can cry together and make all sorts of unwise promises. She thinks that’s what people do. She’s never promised anything to anyone, let alone something as ridiculous as the stars or forever. 

She’s sorting through her limited belongings, trying to best utilize the space freed up by the ransom when Cosette appears in her doorway. She’s been crying. Eponine wishes she could take a petty pleasure in her red nose and swollen eyes but instead she feels slightly hollowed out inside. 

“We could never stay,” Eponine says and she’s surprised by how gentle her voice is as it comes out. “You had to know that.”

Cosette says nothing, just walks over to Eponine and holds out a small posy made of dried flowers. 

“Forget-me-nots,” she says.

“As though I could.” She doesn’t take the posy. No one has ever given her flowers before. Montparnasse had given her a ruby once, but it had been stolen. 

“Please,” Cosette pushes the flowers towards her. Eponine takes them, careful not to crush any of the flowers, careful not to touch Cosette’s hand. 

“I was going to give them to the both of you after dinner,” Cosette says, sitting on Eponine’s bed without so much as by-your-leave. 

So Marius was given a posy as well, Eponine doesn’t quite know how to take that. 

“We’re not leaving until tomorrow. You could have waited.”

Cosette pulls her knees up to her chest. She looks so young. 

“I knew you had to go,” Cosette says, finally. “And I knew it had to be soon. I know you’re both needed by the king. So why am I so upset?”

Eponine doesn’t know how to answer.

Cosette looks at her and her expression is the least open Eponine has seen it. “Are you upset to be going?”

The answer is both yes and no at once. Eponine just looks at her. 

Cosette nods as though Eponine has given her some sort of answer. “We will meet again. I’m sure of it.”

Eponine thinks it very likely that the next time they’ll meet again is her and Marius’ wedding. She doesn’t say so, though. Instead she sits next to Cosette on the bed and they remain there in silence for some time until Cosette is called away to deal with a household matter. 

\---

If Eponine had her way, they would have slipped out at dawn and rode away but Marius claimed to do so would be rude. And cowardly, his eyes seemed to say. 

So they wait until a respectable hour of the morning and the entire household lines up to wish them farewell. They give their thanks to the cooks, and the stablehands, and the quartermaster until they reach Cosette and Valjean. 

Eponine shakes Valjean’s hand. “You are welcome anytime,” he tells her, and seems to mean it. He even seems to mean it when he says it to Marius. He’s been won over, and no wonder, as Marius promises to continue working on the school project, writing as often as he can. 

And then Cosette. Her face shows no sign of any crying. 

“My knights,” she says, smiling warmly before holding out a hand each to both of them. 

Marius doesn’t hesitate before bowing over it. Eponine only pauses for a second before bowing herself, just barely brushing her lips over the knuckles of Cosette’s other hand. She can smell Marius, even as she feels the softness of Cosette’s hand in hers. 

She looks up into Cosette’s smug face. 

“Write to me,” she says. “Both of you.”

\---

Her and Marius stop to camp for the night. Eponine has felt cooped up for the last week and Marius doesn’t argue when she suggests it. He knows her well. 

_You’ve known him for a long time._

Eponine shakes the spectre of Cosette out of her head. All that’s over and done with. 

She doesn’t get the courage to ask Marius the question until after they’ve eaten and the moon is high in the sky. 

“Are you sorry to be leaving your lady love?”

Marius smiles and there’s an edge to it that she doesn’t know. “Yes. But I have work to do.”

“I would have thought you would have asked for the permission to marry her and take her with you,” Eponine says, carefully keeping her tone even. 

Marius doesn’t launch into a dramatic speech, like she half expects him to. Instead he looks at her, steadily. “I don’t think we’re ready to get married yet.”

Eponine looks at him suspiciously. “And where the hell has this new good sense come from?”

Marius grins, dispelling the serious air. “Cosette, mostly.”

“Should have known,” Eponine says, shoving at his shoulder. 

They sit in silence for a time, Eponine beginning to feel a little more settled in her skin, now that she’s away from Cosette. Things are more manageable with just Marius. She’s gotten used to him and to herself around him. She’s beginning to feel almost cheerful when Marius goes and ruins it. 

“I wouldn’t blame you,” Marius says. He’s fiddling with the posy as he’s been doing all day. Eponine had pointedly shoved hers to the bottom of her bag. 

“For what?” Eponine says, annoyed at him, at herself, at Cosette. 

“If you were to fall in love with her,” he says. It has always been his way to be brave about the most unwise things. 

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she snaps at him and goes over to her bedroll. 

“I really wouldn’t mind,” she thinks she hears him whisper. But maybe she’s imagining it and, if she isn’t, she doesn’t want to hear it.

The first letter from Cosette arrives three days after their return.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! You can blame this on The Penumbra Podcast. I'm planning a whole series of Arthurian themed stories, including a sequel to this one.


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